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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE NAPOLEON MYTH 



THE NAPOLEON MYTH 



BY 

HENRY RIDGELY EVANS 



CONTAINING A REPRINT OF "THE GRAND ERRATUM," BY JEAN-BAPTISTE 
PERkS, AND AN INTRODUCTION BY DR. PAUL CARUS 



CHICAGO 
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY 

LONDON AGENTS 
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER 6t CO., Ltd. 

Iq05 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Keceived 

DEC 24 I9U4 

COD^riKiii c.iiiry 

CUSS C»- XXc Noi 

COPY B. 

».,IT|| 



Copyright, 1904 

BY 

THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO. 
Chicago 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Introduction --.... j 

The Grand Erratum - - - - - - ii 

The Mythical Napoleon ----- 25 

Napoleon's Cocked Hat - - - - - 61 




INTRODUCTION. 



It is remarkable how much more our historical traditions are 
saturated with mythology than we are commonly aware of. 
while at the same time legends, in spite of their fanciful dress, 
contain more of actual fact than, on a superficial inspection, 
historical criticism seems to warrant. 

Traditions, be they ever so mythological, if they are genuine, 
are much more conservative than they may appear at first sight. 
Though the Trojan war may be a tangle of legends reflecting 
primitive myths, the Homeric narrative is after all based on 
actual occurrences. Though William Tell never existed in Switz- 
erland, there must have existed many William Tells, not only 
in Switzerland but all over the world. Though the Biblical 
account of Samson's deeds, like the twelve labors of Hercules, 
is the echo of a Babylonian solar epic which glorifies the deeds 
of Shamash in his migrations through the twelve signs of the 
zodiac, there may have been a Hebrew hero whose deeds re- 
minded the Israelites of Shamash, and so his adventures were 
told with such modifications as would naturally let the solar 
legends cluster about his personality. 

Biblical traditions have in one sense been fully verified by the 
Babylonian excavations. They show that occurrences such as 
are recorded in them actually took place, but the statements in 
the several books of the Old Testament are not simply narratives 
of the facts but stories of events as they appeared to the children 
of Israel at the time when they were written. They are onesided 



2 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

and are not historical in the strictest sense of the word ; they 
are historical only in so far as they are echoes of actual events, 
the narrative being- modified by the beliefs of their authors. 

The word Homer means " arranger " or " compiler " and it is 
obvious that the several songs of the Homeric epics are not writ- 
ten by the same hand. They are two great compilations and 
we must assume that the ancient rhapsodists selected with 
preference themes more or less closely related to the Siege of 
Troy and the adventures of Odysseus. They may have com- 
posed other songs which are now lost, but when in the sixth 
century they were redacted into two great epics, the Iliad and 
the Odyssey, the most obvious discrepancies were removed, while 
all those materials that did not fall in with the general plan were 
doomed to oblivion. 

Troy was situated in the northwestern corner of Asia Minor 
in a place favorable in the old times for the development of a 
large commercial city. It offered excellent opportunities for 
the exchange of goods that came from both the East and the 
West, — from the interior of Asia and from Europe. The coast 
was hospitable for such ships as were built in those days, but the 
advantages were counterbalanced by the disadvantages which 
exposed the city to hostile attacks and so the place became unsafe 
on account of its wealth, proving an attraction to pirates. 
Homer tells us the history of the capture of Troy not as it really 
happened, but as it lived in the memory of the Greek nation 
between the ninth and fifth centuries B. C. It seems a hopeless 
task to extract from the Iliad the historical facts that underlie 
the story which, in spite of its historical background, is a tangle 
of myth and legend. There can be no doubt about it that Helen 
is a humanised form of Selene, the moon; but for all that, some 
mortal woman named Helen may have been the cause of a war 
between Greece and Troy ! Odysseus is the sun in his migrations, 
who encounters innumerable adventures and descends into the 
underworld, whence he returns unscathed to the domain of the 
living; yet there may have lived an adventurous chief of Ithaca, 
named Odysseus, who roamed all over the world and came home 
after an absence of twenty years, an unknown beggar. 

Now it is stransfe that the excavations of Schliemann seem 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

to verify the Homeric stories, for Schliemann discovered ancient 
ornaments and weapons such as are described in Homer, and 
behevers in the letter of Homer rejoiced at the fact and declared 
triumphantly that, after all, Homer must be believed in ; but, 
unfortunately for these enthusiasts, Schliemann's excavations 
prove too much, for he excavated not only one city of Troy, but 
several cities which are built one upon the top of the other, 
proving that the siege of Troy and the conquest and burning of 
the city, had not taken place once but several times ; and so we 
see that history must have repeated itself, and the mythology 
that overlays the tradition of one tale may have suited all others 
of the same kind. If a myth embodies a general truth, the myth 
will find verification in history whenever events of the same kind 
happen, not once but repeatedly, for the myth stands for the 
type and the type is realised in every concrete instance. 

As to Tell, we have to state that no family of that name can 
be traced in Switzerland at or before the time of the Swiss 
struggle for independence, and the story of Tell's famous shot 
at the apple on the head of his child is mentioned for the first 
time in a chronicle written in 1470, /. c, about two centuries 
after the alleged occurrence.'^ But while there is no founda- 
tion in Swiss history for the tale of Tell, we are familiar with 
similar stories among the Norse, the Danes, and the Saxons. f 
We can scarcely doubt that the legend is a last reminiscence of 
human sacrifices which, with- the progress of civilisation, were 
gradually abolished, and one form in which the abolition of 
human sacrifices was efifected consisted in a ritual according to 
which the victim was consecrated to death but was given a 
chance of escape. 

* The Tell legend appears first in the so-called Jl'eissc Buck of the 
Archives of Obwalden, 1470 ; and again in the Chronik of Melchior Russ, 
1482. There is further a Tell ballad of unknown date, and Tschudi, who 
wrote in the sixteenth century, incorporated it in his Clironicon Hclveticmn. 
Tschudi's account was utilized by Schiller, who, in his famous drama, gave 
the story its final and classical form. 

t Saxo Grammaticus tells the Tell story of " Toko," the Edda of " Egil " 
and an old English ballad of " William of Cloudeslay." It would lead me 
too far to exhaust the subject, but a traveller's report even of distant Arabia 
gives us information of a custom in which a person is offered as a sacrifice, 
until a skilled marksman liberates the victim after the fashion of Tell's shot. 



4 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

While we positively know that Tell is not an ancient Swiss 
name we may boldly say that the stories of Tell did not, but 
might as well have happened as not, for wherever there is oppres- 
sion there we meet with characters such as Tell, who oppose a 
tyrant's violence. 

Mankind will always interpret the facts of life in the light of 
their convictions and beliefs. Wherever a great personality rises 
into prominence stories will be told of him which may have 
happened to characters of the same type of bygone ages. This 
is the reason why the same anecdotes are told of Caesar, of 
Charlemagne, of Frederick the Great, and of Grant, and they 
will be told of great generals of the ages to come. 

When Napoleon rose into power his heroic dash and his quick 
success dazzled the minds of his countrymen and he was naturally 
compared now to Alexander the Great, now to Cfesar, or even 
to the Gods. The fate of former conquerors became, as it were, 
a prophecy for his career. He himself was induced to imitate 
his predecessors, and his admirers did not hesitate to see him in 
the light of mythical heroes. Thus it was but an inevitable 
result that many incidents were attributed to him simply because 
they belong to the same type of heroes, mythical as well as his- 
torical, with whom he had been classified. 

A little psychological insight into the constitution of the human 
mind will best explain the situation. 

Every occurrence which we experience is at once co-related 
to and associated with former experiences and both are so fused 
that an unsophisticated person can not easily separate the facts 
from the opinions which we hold as to their nature. Thus myth 
creeps into history and miracles are common events to those who 
believe in the miraculous. 

In our religious literature we find the same mixture of fact 
and fancy. There is more historical truth in the history of 
Buddha, and of Jesus, and of Mohammed than may appear at 
first sight, judging from the miraculous adornments of all re- 
ligious tradition. As ivy quickly covers an old tree, the myth- 
ological accretions almost conceal the real facts of the lives of 
religious leaders. We can be sure that Jesus, Gotamo Sid- 
dhartha, and Mohammed were real persons, but the people 



INTRODUCTION. 



5 



who look upon them in faith co-relate the acts related of them 
with their highest religious ideals of the Buddha, the Christ 
and of the Prophet. The Christian Gospels are not simply narra- 
tives of the life of Jesus but they are the story of Jesus as the 
Christ, embodying ancient traditions not only of the Jewish 
notion of a Messiah but many other kindred hopes. They echo 
the expectations of the people who were prepared for the coming 
of a Saviour. The Christ ideal existed before Jesus. The Jew- 
ish Messiah conception had been modified and deepened by the 
Persian doctrine of Mithra, the virgin-born viceroy of God's 
kingdom on earth, the Babylonian Marduk, the Conqueror of 
Death and mediator between God the Father and men, and also 
the world-resigning Buddha of India. When Jesus was accepted 
by His disciples as the Messiah, the Christ, all the notions and 
honors of previous kindred figures in the domain of both history 
and mythology were transferred and attributed to Him. 

The picture of Jesus in the New Testament is not strictly 
historical, but it contains historical facts. It is the story of 
Jesus, the Nazarene, as interpreted by those who belie\-ed that 
he was the Christ, 

-1^ ^ ^ 

One of the best satires ever written in the literature of the 
world is Jean Baptiste Peres's " Grand Erratum," which ap- 
peared in 1827. Its shafts are aimed at a book of M. Dupuis, 
a scholar of great erudition, who believed that all religions, and 
the story of Jesus of Nazareth as well, could be explained as 
solar myths. ^ 

The leading idea of M. Peres's pamphlet is perhaps not orig- 
inal with him. In the year 181 9, eight years before the publi- 
cation of the " Grand Erratum," Archbishop Whately had pub- 
lished anonymously a similar satire under the title " Historic 
Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte," directed against the 
logic of David Hume's scepticism, and it is not impossible that 
M. Peres heard of this pamphlet and that thereby the main 
argument of his plan was suggested to him. It is, however, 
highly improbable that he ever saw or read Whately's elaborate 

1 L'Origine de tons Ics Ciiltes, on la Religion Universelle. Par. M. Dupuis. 
Paris, 1796. 



6 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

expositions, else lie would undoubtedly have made use of many 
details. 

Archbishop Whately is very ponderous and imitates the sub- 
ject of his criticism to such an extent that one may read many 
passages and whole pages without being able to detect the slight- 
est trace of the author's irony. In fact, many of his arguments 
are not travesties at all, but are literally true. The life of Na- 
poleon as it is popularly told not only in France but also in other 
countries does contain mythical elements ; and many ancient 
stories told of mythical heroes were repeated of this latest and 
most extraordinary representative of historical prodigies. 

The difference between Whately' s ponderous sarcasm and M. 
Peres's sprightly wit is characteristic of the two nationalities of. 
the authors, and while appreciating the one, we need not detract 
from the other. 

Jean Baptiste Peres was Professor of Mathematics and Libra- 
rian of Agen, a small town of southern France. He was noted in 
the circle of his friends for his conservative tendencies in both 
politics and religion. His literary fame, however, rests entirely 
upon this little brochure on Napoleon in which he so successfully 
pilloried the superficial methods of rejecting historical evidences 
solely because they contain some mythical ingredients. His 
" Grand Erratum " appeared in several editions and has been 
translated into almost all European languages. It was hailed by 
conservatives of every stripe and color, and he was praised as the 
David who with a pretty pebble picked up from the bank of a 
brooklet had killed the Goliath of Biblical Criticism. 

The truth is that the first attempts at Text as well as Higher 
Criticism were of a purely negative character. Every miracle and 
indeed every remarkable fact was explained as a myth, and it is 
onlv recently, within the last two or three decades, that our 
Higher Critics have begun to appreciate the conservative char- 
acter of all religious traditions. We now know that both the Old 
and the New Testaments contain ingredients of unquestionably 
historical reliability, and though they have frequently been re- 
edited and revised under the influence of later dogmatic tenden- 
cies, portions of them (e. g., in Genesis) are much older than 
would suit the most rigorous conservatives of former years. 

The sole excuse for republishing M. Peres's " Grand Er- 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

latum " is the fact that it is out of print and forgotten. No copy 
can be found in any of the Chicago Hbraries. Nor does it exist 
in the Congressional Library at Washington, and we could only 
with great difficulty through the courtesy of Messrs. Kegan Paul 
& Co. get hold of a second-hand copy in England, which is a 
translation made from the French by a young lady who writes 
under the name " Lily," and is accompanied with an introduc- 
tion b}- Richard Garnet. LL. D., of the British Museum. It 
bears no date and is published by E. W. Allen. London.^V>«>^ 

It will be very instructive to' study the nature of myth forma- 
tion or rather myth accretion, not only in following the wake of 
the higher criticism of the New Testament, but also in parallel 
instances such as Napoleon's. Wq see here how rapidly folklore 
tales attach themselves to a dramatic figure of history ; and 
Napoleon's case is perhaps the better for a student, because his 
personality is still within clear rememlirance of the last but one 
generation and the 'legends have developed under the very eyes 
of a civilized world, whose historians were in the habit of record- 
ing facts with accuracy and whose writings are still within reach. 
It is for this purpose that we publish here a summary of the case 
of " The Mythical Napoleon," by Henry Ridgely Evans, who has 
made a special study of the mythopoeic element in his career. 

The satire of M. Peres will be better understood when read 
in the light which IMr. Evans throws on the subject ; and we may 
add, the lesson is applicable to the life stories of almost all 
national and religious leaders of mankind. 

Paul Carus. 




•^5. 



GRAND ERRATUM. THE XOX-EXISTEXCE 
OF XAPOLEOX PROVED. 




\L , s \1\ r ^LBIV, P VIM 



C. MONNEl, Dbb 

Presented to His Imperial Majesty by M. Vivant - nenon. Director General of the 
Mus6e Napoleon. 




GRAND ERRATUM. THE NON-EXISTENCE OF 
NAPOLEON PROVED. 

BY JEAN-BAPTISTE PERES. 

Napoleon Bonaparte, of whom so much has been said and 
written, never even existed. He is nothing more than an allegor- 
ical personage. He is the personification of the sun ; and we can 
prove our assertion by showing how everything related of Na- 
poleon the Great has been borrowed from the great luminary. 
Let us see briefly what we are told of this remarkable man. 

We are told : 

That he was called Napoleon Bonaparte ; 

That he was born in an island in the Mediterranean sea ; 

That his mother's name was Letitia; 

That he had three sisters and four brothers, three of whom 
were kings ; 

That he had two wives, one of whom bore him a son ; 

That he put an end to a great revolution; 

That he had under him sixteen marshals of the empire, twelve 
of whom were in active service ; 

That he prevailed in the South, and was defeated in the North ; 

To conclude, that after a reign of twelve years, begun upon 
his arrival from the East, he departed, and disappeared in the 
Western seas. 

It remains for us to ascertain whether these various details are 



12 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

borrowed from the sun, and we hope that every reader of this 
disquisition will rise convinced that this is the case. 

I. In the first place, every one knows that the sun is called 
Apollo by the poets. Now, the difference between Apollo and 
Napoleon is not a great one, and it will appear very much less 
still if we go back to the meaning and origin of these names. It 
is unquestionable that the word Apollo means Exterminator; and 
it seems that this name was given by the Greeks to the sun on 
account of the injury it did them before Troy, where a part of 
their army perished from the excessive heat, and from the pesti- 
lence that followed at the time of the outrage perpetrated by 
Agamemnon on Chryses, priest of the sun, as we read at the 
beginning- of the " Iliad " of Homer. The brilliant imagination 
of the Greek poets transformed the rays of the luminary into 
flaming arrows, hurled on all sides by the angry god, who would 
soon have exterminated everything if his wrath had not been 
appeased by the release of Chryseis, daughter of Chryses, the 
sacrificial priest. 

This, then, is probably the reason why the sun was called 
Apollo. But whatever the cause or circumstance which occa- 
sioned the giving of such a name to this luminary, it is certain 
that the name means Exterminator. 

Now, Apollo is the same word as Apoleon. They are derived 
from Apollyo {dvoXXvco), or Apoleo (dTroXew), two Greek verbs 
which are really the same, and which mean " destroy," " kill." 
*' exterminate." 

Thus, if the fictitious hero of our century were called Apoleon, 
he would have the same name as the sun, and would besides fulfil 
the meaning of the name ; for he is pictured to us as the greatest 
exterminator of men who ever existed. But this personage is 
called Napoleon, and thus his name contains an initial letter 
which we do not find in the name of the sun. Yes, there is an 
extra letter, an extra syllable even ; for, according to the inscrip- 
tions cut in every part of the capital (Paris), the real name of 
this supposed hero was Neapoleon, or Neapolion. This is more 
particularly to be seen on the column of the Place Vendome. 

Now, this extra syllable makes no difference whatever. The 
svllable, no doubt, like the rest of the name, is Greek; and in 



THE GRAND ERRATUM. 



13 




H 



THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 



Greek ne ( vr]}, or iiai (vat ), is one of the strongest affirmations, 
equivalent to our veritably, or yea. Whence it follows that Na- 
poleon means Veritable Exterminator, — Veritable Apollo ; it 
means, in truth, the sun. 

But what is to be said of his other name? What connection 
can there be between the word Bonaparte and the star of the day? 
At first it is not at all evident, but this at least can be understood : 
that as bona parte means " good part," it has no doubt to do with 
something consisting of two parts, a good and a bad, with some- 
thing which in addition is connected with the sun, Napoleon. 
Now, nothing is more directly connected with the sun than the 
results of his diurnal revolution, and these results are day and 
night, light and darkness ; the light produced by his presence, and 
that darkness which prevails during his absence. This is an 
allegory borrowed from the Persians. They have the reign of 
Ormuzd and Ahriman^ of light and darkness, of good and bad 
spirits. And it is to these last, spirits of evil and darkness, that 
people used formerly to devote their foes, using the following 
imprecation : Abi in malam partem. If by mala parte was meant 
darkness, no doubt bona parte meant light. — day as opposed to 
night. There can then be no doubt that this name is connected 
with the sun, especially when it is seen to be associated with 
Napoleon, who is himself the sun, as has been already demon- 
strated. 

2. According to Greek mythology, Apollo was born in an 
island in the Mediterranean (the Isle of Delos) ; an island in the 
Mediterranean has, therefore, been fabled as the birthplace of 
Napoleon ; and the preference has been given to Corsica, because 
the relative positions of Corsica and France, where he was to be 
made to reign, correspond best to those of Greece and Delos, 
where were situated the chief temples and oracles of Apollo. 

Pausanias, it is trtie, calls Apollo an Egyptian divinity; but it 
does not follow that an Egyptian divinity must be born in Egypt ; 
it is enough that he should be there regarded as a god. and that is 
what Pausanias meant. He designed to inform us that the Egyp- 
tians worshipped Apollo, and that establishes yet another connec- 
tion between Napoleon and the sun ; for Napoleon is said to have 
been held in Egypt to be invested with supernatural qualities, to 



THE GRAND ERRATUM. 15 

have been regarded as the friend of Mahomet, and to have re- 
ceived homage partaking of the nature of adoration. 

3. His mother is said to have been named Letitia. But by 
the word Letitia (or "joy") was meant the dawn whose first 
tender Hght fills all nature w^ith joy. It is the dawn, say the 




GENERAL BONAPARTE. (After Guerin.) 

poets, which bring-s forth the sun, flinging wide for him the 
portals of the East with her rosy-tipped fingers. 

Again it is worthy of remark that, according to Greek mythol- 
ogy, the mother of Apollo was called Leto (At^tw). But if the 
Romans made Latona of Leto, it has been preferred in our cen- 
tury to change it into Letitia, because larfifia is the noun derived 
from l(Tfor (obsolete form, Icuto), which means " to inspire joy." 

Assuredly, then, this Letitia, no less than her son, belongs to 
Greek mythology. 



i6 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

4. According- to tradition, this son of Letitia had three sisters, 
and there can be no doubt that these three sisters are the three 
Graces, who, with their companions the Muses, were the orna- 
ments of their brother Apollo's court. 

5. This modern Apollo is said to have had four brothers. 
Now, as we shall show, these four brothers are the four seasons 
of the year. Let us not be startled, at the outset, at seeing the 
seasons represented by men rather than women. It ought not 
even to seem an innovation, since, in French, only one of the four 
seasons, the autumn, is feminine; and even with respect to that 
our grammarians are disagreed. But in Latin aiitumnus is no 
more feminine than the other three seasons, so there is no diffi- 
culty on that point. The four brothers of Napoleon may very 
well represent the four seasons, and what follows proves that 
they reall}^ do so. 

Of Napoleon's four brothers, three, they tell us, were kings ; 
these three kings are Spring, who reigns over the flowers; Sum- 
mer, who reigns over the harvest; and Autumn, who reigns over 
the fruit. As these three seasons derive all their potent influence 
from the sun, we are told that Napoleon's three brothers held 
their sovereignty at his hands, and reigned only by his authority. 
And when it is added that of Napoleon's four brothers one was 
not a king, it is because one of the four seasons — Winter, reigns 
over nothing. But if, to invalidate our parallel, it were alleged 
that Winter was not without sway, and if it were wished to 
ascribe to him the dismal principality of the frosts and snows 
which whiten our land at this melancholy season, our answer 
would be ready : that, we should say, is what was designed to be 
shown by the empty and ridiculous principality with which this 
brother of Napoleon is said to have been invested after the fall 
of all his family. This principality has been described as in con- 
nection with the village of Canino, in preference to any other, 
because Canino comes from cani, which denotes the white hairs 
of chill old age, and they recall winter. For. to the poet, the 
forests crowning our hill-sides are locks of hair ; and when 
Winter covers them with his hoar frost, it is the white hairs of 
failing nature in the old age of the year. 

Cum gelidus crescit canis in montibiis humor. 



THE GRAND ERRATUM. 



17 



Thus the pretended Prince of Canino is nothing more than the 
personification of winter. Winter begins when nothing more is 
left of the three good seasons, and the sun is at his greatest dis- 




tance from our country, which is invaded by the furious children 
of the Jiovtli, the poet's name for the winds; the winds come from 
northern chmes, discolor our land, and cover it with a detested 
whiteness. This has given rise to the fabulous account of the 



1 8 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

invasion of the northern nations into France, where they are said 
to have done away with a parti-colored flag adorning it, and to 
have substituted a white one which entirely covered it, after the 
exile of the fabulous Napoleon. It would be idle to repeat that 
this is merely emblematical of the rime that the winds from the 
north produce in the winter, and which obliterates the charming 
colors that the sun produced in our land, before he waned and 
departed from us. It is easy to see the analogy of all these 
things with the ingenious fables conceived in our century. 

6. According to these same fables. Napoleon had two wives ; 
hence two wives have been attributed to the sun. These two 
wives are the moon and the earth : the moon according to the 
Greeks (Plutarch is our authority), and the earth according to 
the Egyptians ; with this noteworthy difference, that by the moon 
the sun had no issue, and by the earth he had a son, an only son. 
This child was the little Horus, son of Osiris and Isis ; that is 
to say, of the sun and the earth, as may be seen in the " History 
of the Heavens," Vol. I., p. 6i and following. It is an Egyp- 
tian allegory, where the little Horus, born from the earth im- 
pregnated b}^ the sun, represents the fruits of agriculture. Even 
so the birth of the supposed son of Napoleon has been fixed at the 
20th of March, the period of the vernal equinox, because in the 
spring agricultural produce undergoes its most important phase 
of development. 

7. Napoleon is said to have put an end to a devastating scourge 
which terrorized all France, and was called the Hydra of the 
Revolution. Now, a hydra is a serpent, of what kind matters lit- 
tle, especially when the serpent is fabulous. The Python, an enor- 
mous serpent, was the cause of great terror in Greece; Apollo 
slew the monster, and dissipated the fear of the people ; this was 
his first exploit. Hence we are told that Napoleon began his 
reign by crushing the French Revolution, which is itself as much 
a chimera as everything else. For revolution is obviously de- 
rived from the Latin word revohitus, which denotes a curled-up 
serpent. The Revolution is the Python, neither more nor less. 

8. The celebrated warrior of the nineteenth century had under 
him, we are told, twelve marshals at the head of his armies, and 
four were not in active service. Now, the twelve first are 
obviously the twelve signs of the zodiac, marching under the or- 



THE GRAND ERRATUM. 



19 



ders of the sun Napoleon, each of them commanding a division of 
the innumerable army of the stars, which is called the celestial 
host in the Bible, and is divided into twelve parts, corresponding 
to the twelve signs of the zodiac. Such are the twelve marshals 
who, according to our mythical chronicles, were actively em- 





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lNSTALLAT10x\ OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE. 

ployed under the Emperor Napoleon. The four others, in all 
probability, are the four cardinal points, which, fixed amid uni- 
versal motion, are very well symbolised by the inactivity of which 
we have spoken. 

Thus, all these marshals, active and inactive, are purely sym- 
bolical beings, with no more reality than their leader. 



20 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

9. We are told that this leader of so many brilliant armies 
overran in triumph the countries of the south, but that, having 
penetrated too far north, he was there unable to maintain himself. 
Now, these details precisely apply to the sun's course. The sun, 
it is well known, rules supreme in the south, as is said of the 
Emperor Napoleon. But it is most worthy of note that, after 
the vernal equinox, the sun makes for the northern regions, and 
moves further away from the Equator. But when he has taken 
his course in this direction for three months, he encounters the 
North Tropic, which compels him to retreat and go back the way 
he came to the south, following the sign Cancer, or Crab ; which 
sign, according to Macrobius, derives its name from the retro- 
grade course of the sun in this region of the globe. This, then, 
is the material from which has been drawn Napoleon's imaginary 
northern expedition to Moscow, together with the humiliating- 
retreat by which it is said to have been followed. 

Thus everything we have been told of the success or defeat 
of this strange warrior is nothing more than a series of allusions 
to the course of the sun. 

10. Finally, and this needs no explanation, the sun rises in 
the east and sets in the west, as all the world knows. But to the 
spectators at the extremities of the earth, the sun seems to rise 
from the eastern sea in the morning and to plunge into the west- 
ern sea at night. It is, moreover, thus that poets describe his 
rising and setting. 

That, then, is all we are to understand when we are told that 
Napoleon came by sea from the east (Egypt) to reign over 
France, and that he disappeared in the western seas after a reign 
of twelve years. The twelve years are nothing more than the 
twelve hours of the day during which the sun shines on the 
horizon. 

" He reigned but a day," says the author of " Les Nouvelles 
Messeniennes," speaking of Napoleon; and the way in which he 
describes his rise, decline, and fall shows that, like ourselves, this 
delightful poet saw in Napoleon nothing more than an image of 
the sun. And in truth he is nothing more. His name proves it ; 
his mother's name proves it; his three sisters, his four brothers, 
his two wives, his son, his marshals, his exploits, — all prove it. 
It is jiroved, moreover, by his birthplace; by the regions whence 



THE GRAND ERRATUM. 31 

we are told, he came before entering on his career of dominion; 
by the time he employed in traversing those regions ; by the coun- 
tries where he prevailed, by those where he succumbed; and by 
the place where he vanished, pale and discrozuned, after his bril- 
liant course, — to quote the poet Casimir Delavigne. 

It has, then, been proved that the supposed hero of our cen- 
tury is nothing more than an allegorical personage, deriving his 
attributes from the sun. It follows that Napoleon Bonaparte, 
of whom so much has been said and written, never even existed ; 
and this fallacy, into which so many people have fallen headlong, 
arises from the amusing blunder of mistaking the mythology of 
the nineteenth century for history. 

We might further have appealed in support of our contention 
to a great number of royal ordinances, whose indisputable dates 
are evidently irreconcilable with the reign of the pretended Na- 
poleon ; but we have had sound reasons for letting them alone. 




THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 







THE SOLDIER'S DRiiAAl. (Detaille.) 




THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON, 
AN OCCULT STUDY. 

BY HENRY RIDGELY EVANS. 



"The real hero of modern legend, the legend that towers above the whole 
century, is Napoleon." — Inter. Qi/ar., Vol. VI., No. i. Sept.-Dec, 1902. 

"After Marengo, you are the hero of Europe, the man of Providence, 
anointed of the Lord; after Austerlitz, Napoleon the Great; after Waterloo, 
the Corsican ogre." Victor Hugo: ]ViUiani Shakespeare. 

L 

It has been the fate of the great historical personages — war- 
riors, priests, poets, kings and reformers — to have woven about 
them a tissue of myths and fables. Miraculous stories have 
grown up about the Christ. Moses, Mohammed. Buddha, Zo- 
roaster, Pythagoras, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne and 
Napoleon I : entirely obscuring the true characters of these great 
men. They remind one of the interminable bandages wrapt about 
the Egyptian mummy. One has to unwind these cerement cloths 
in order to get a view of the body — to see it in its staring naked- 
ness. It is, then, the duty of the student of history to dissipate 
these myths and fanciful stories, to treat men as real beings, and 
not as demi-ofods. 



26 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

Let us take Napoleon I. as an example. There is a Napoleonic 
legend that persists in spite of the iconoclastic efforts of modern 
historians to destroy it. Like Banquo's ghost it will not down. 
The name of Napoleon is still one to conjure with. We make 
pilgrimages to his tomb, under the gilded dome of the Invalides, 
and offer up our devotions to the ashes of the dead hero. By 
paying a small fee to a uniformed official, we may gaze upon his 
little cocked hat — le Chapeau dc Mar,engo, which has been 
metamorphosed into a symbol or fetish by a French painter. 
Every few years there is a tremendous revival of the Napoleonic 
cult. Witness the extraordinary enthusiasm over Rostand's 
play " L'Aiglon," with its memories of the great soldier and 
his ill-fated son, the poor eaglet who beat his feeble wings in 
vain against the golden bars of his cage. 

Says Debrit : " The Napoleonic legend did not arise at once, 
that is, while he was the all-powerful master of France, and 
while he was crushing Europe under his iron heel with an 
amount of free-and-easiness, and a contempt for the rights of 
others that has been equaled or surpassed only by the great 
Asiatic conquerors, Tamerlane and Ghenghis Khan. At that 
time he was admired and feared, but he had not yet become, as 
he did become later, the ideal of grandeur and chivalric majesty. 
His epic commenced after his fall only ... It was de- 
veloped after Waterloo, especially when the vanquished despot 
appeared in fallen majesty on that rock of St. Helena, which 
turned out, indeed, to be a magnificent pedestal for him." 

Napoleon's memoirs are crowded with misstatements and 
garbled facts. They might be called his apocrapha. They 
dwell almost exclusively upon the earlier period of his career 
and on the Waterloo campaign. Says J. R. Seeley {Napoleon I., 
p. 230) : 

" They reminded the world that the Prometheus now agoniz- 
ing on the lonely rock, who had lately fallen in defending a free 
nation against a coalition of kings and emperors, was the same 
who, in his youth, had been the champion of the First French 
Republic against the First Coalition. They consigned the long 
interval to oblivion. Hence the Napoleonic legend, which has 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 



27 



grown up in the very midst of the nineteenth century, and would 
perhaps never have been seriously shaken but for the failure of 
the Second Empire." 

Napoleon's career between the years 1803 and 1814, when it 
was " shaped most freely by his own will, " was an unparalleled 




THE EIGHT EPOCHS OF THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

This original series of hats, presented in different significant positions, is from the pencil 
of Steuben, one of the most fertile painters of the First Empire, and symbolizes the eight prin- 
cipal epochs in Napoleon's career : (i) Venddmiaire, (2) Consulate, (3) Empire, (4) Auster- 
litz, (s) Wagram, (6) Moscow, (7) Waterloo, (8) St. Helena. (From Armand Dayot's 
Napoleon raconte par I'image. Paris: Librairie Hachette & Cie. 1895.) 



despotism, during which a republic was crushed out of existence 
and a hereditary monarchy set up in its place — a brummagem 
Court, with all the trappings of royalty, but crowded with mili- 
tary adventurers, whose maniercs bourgeoises were the laughing 
stock of the aristocracies of Europe. You cannot make a silk 
purse out of a sow's ear, though you may metamorphose an inn- 
keeper's apprentice into a Marshal of France. A marshal mav 



28 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

know how to use his sword to perfection, but to wield his knife 
and fork at a fashionable dinner party — ah, that is another 
matter entirely! 

Napoleon during the above-mentioned period was the great 
enemy and oppressor of nationalities. He ground a free press 
to powder beneath his iron heel and filled France with the spies 
of the arch-sycophant and hypocrite, Fouche. Trusting no one, 
no one trusted him, as witness the conduct of the ex-Bishop of 
Autun, Talleyrand, who sold his master a dozen times over, 
and pocketed the proceeds, but unlike Judas, without remorse. 

Europe was plundered of its art treasures to fill the galleries 
and museums of France. It was a species of highway robbery 
on a gigantic scale. This and other acts of Napoleon led the 
historian Taine to characterise him as the Corsicon Bandit. 

The nationality movement, which began in Spain and Tyrol 
and spread through North Germany, was a reaction against Na- 
poleon's tyranny, " In the year 1815," says Seeley, " he posed 
as a champion and martyr of the nationality principle against 
the Holy Alliance. The curtain fell upon this pose. It brought 
back the memory of that Bonaparte, wdio at the end of the 
eighteenth century had seemed the antique republican hero 
dreamed by Rousseau, and men forgot once more how com- 
pletely he had disappointed their expectations. By looking only 
at the beginning and at the end of his career, and by disregard- 
ing all the intermediate period, an imaginary Napoleon has been 
obtained, who is a republican, not a despot ; a lover of liberty, 
not an authoritarian; a champion of the Revolution, not the 
destroyer of the Revolution ; a hero of independence, not a con- 
queror ; a friend of the people, not a contemner of the people ; 
a man of heart and virtue, not a ruthless militarist, cynic, and 
Machiavellian. This illusion led to the restoration of the Na- 
poleonic dynasty in 1852." 

Lord Wolseley says of Napoleon {" Cosmopolitan Magazine," 
January, 1903) : 

" His longing for praise was strong, but his determination to 
secure posthumous fame was still stronger. It was not enough, 
it did not satisfy his insatiable craving for renown, that all 
nations should recognise him as the greatest of living men; he 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 



29 



would have his name coupled forever with those of Alexander 
and of Julius Ctesar, and placed beside theirs in the world's great 
Valhalla. Of all he wrote and dictated at St. Helena, this 
aspiration was the keynote. Those who assisted him in the 
compilation of the hodgepodge of interesting untruths, concocted 




K? 



V// A/ /. </f / 



EMPEROR NAPOLEON. 



there for publication, helped in this plot to conceal facts and 
deceive future generations. He would have had us forget the 
heroes of other ages, and would have history filled with the story 
of his fame alone. He placed on record in his beautiful island 
prison, not A\hat he had thought or said or done during the vicis- 



30 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

situdes of his unparalleled career, but what he wished history to 
accept and repeat as facts forever. 

" There is no great historical character of modern times whose 
early life has been more variously recorded than his has been, 
and none contributed to this result more than he did himself. 
The large amount of fiction with which his story abounds has 
so long passed current as fact that legends have been created 
[the italics are mine] on its foundations to further what I may 
zvell term the ' Napoleonic zvorship.' These fables are still re- 
peated in many of his most important biographies as facts beyond 
all dispute. As I take it, the aim of this great Corsican roman- 
cer zvas to mystify posterity concerning the occurrences of his 
early years by relating them not as they zuere but as he conceived 
they should have been in the life of the Second Ccesar — Na- 
poleon, Emperor of the French." 

II. 

There is then a legendary Napoleon and a real Napoleon. The 
real Napoleon is gradually coming to light, and the mythical 
one is fading into the background. Modern historians are tak- 
ing middle ground. The great Emperor is neither a monster 
of wickedness nor a hero-saint. Of his genius as a sovereign 
and as a strategist he has but few equals, if any. " Seldom," 
says Debrit, " has there appeared on this earth an intelligence 
better armed, or, in other words, better adapted to the work it 
had to perform and to the time at which it was to manifest itself. 
He found society in a state of complete decomposition, and his 
instinct for organisation enabled him to create out of it a new 
structure, made in his own image, moulded, as it w'ere, on his 
own frame. ... 

" There are some five or six men in history that may be com- 
pared to him, and it will always be difficult to decide which of 
them all was the greatest, that is, the strongest, the most despotic. 
and .the most feared. If he did not experience the enjoyment of 
ordering vast executions of men such as those in which his 
predecessors loved to contemplate their own grandeur and the 
nothingness of mankind, it is because he lived in Paris in the 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. -^ i 

nineteenth century of the Christian era, and not in Nineveh 
under the kings, the sons o£ Sargon. But he caused blood to 
flow in streams upon the battlefields for motives that were 
scarcely better, and he humbled more rulers and destroyed more 
states than any Sennacherib or Asurbanipal. He also had his 
hecatombs, and in this respect he need envy no one." 

As to Napoleon the man, a flood of contemporary witnesses 
like De Remusat, Pasquier. Chaptal. etc., bear witness to his 











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DIVIDING THE WORLD AMONG HIS BROTHERS— COLLECTION HENNINS. 



character. He was the giant egotist of the world. In him the 
cold-blooded motto of the founder of the Jesuits, '* the end justi- 
fies the means," was fully realised — and says Debrit, " there was 
but one inviolable right, the Emperor's will. But violence bears 
in itself the germ of weakness, and here is the unimpeachable 
verdict rendered by history, by the mouth of that servant of the 
empire (Pasquier), on the policy of excess and wilfulness that 
believed in violence and conquest only, and was constantly 
directed toward crushing some one. — now France, now the Pope, 
and now Europe into the bargain. 



32 THE NAPOLEON ^lYTH. 

" ' He ended,' says Pasquier, ' by being unable to secure to 
France its former frontiers, and he handed us over almost de- 
fenseless to the spirit of ultramontanism, and the encroachments 
of the papal power.' " 

France was hypnotised by Napoleon, and saw only glory and 
conquest, instead of madness and ruin. 

Caesar Lombroso, the great criminologist, has this to say : 

''Alexander the great [and] Napoleon I. . . . have the 
[criminal] type complete, and only the prestige coming from their 
great deeds (which always augments after death) makes us blind, 
so that in them, physically and morally, we only see the traits of 
genius and not those of the criminal. It is certain that in the 
busts and portraits of Napoleon I., after the Consulate, we find no 
more the asymmetric face, stern eyes, the exaggeration of the jaw 
bones, and the alveolar pragnathism which he really had, and, in 
the same way, few busts of Alexander the Great reveal his crim- 
inal type, with vertical wrinkles on the forehead, with the acro- 
cephaly, etc. The same thing happens with us in judging their 
actions; we go to the point of excusing common crimes (murder 
of the Duke d'Enghein) and even as far as considering the butch- 
ery of the Borgias as works of genius, as did Machiavelli, and 
admiring the most insensate enterprises, such as those of Napo- 
leon in Spain and Russia, and those of Alexander in India, taking 
them for profound conceptions as though errors and crimes, when 
made on a large scale, change their nature. Not only do people 
forgive, but they forget, the cynical indifference of Napoleon to 
the thousands of deaths which he caused and at the sight of which 
he did not know what to say except, ' A night of Paris will adjust 
all this.' and they also forget the order to shoot en masse 300 inno- 
cent Calabrese, setting fire to their village, because some one had 
shot at his soldiers. . . . and the firing of an entire city at 
the order of Alexander the Great only to please a courtesan, who 
murdered his best friend."* 

III. 

Napoleon's Egyptian campaign was productive of legends. 
When the hero of Lodi, after his splendid campaign in Italy, 

* Inter. Oiiar., Yo\. \1.. No. 2. Dec. 1902 — ]\'Iarch 1903. p. 239. 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 



33 



suggested Egypt, to the Directory, as the scene of future conflict 
and glory for the French arms, the legislative figureheads of 
France were not slow in taking the hint. They felt themselves 
insecure in their imitation curule chairs as long as the idol of 
the people and the army remained inactive at home. The excuse 
for the expedition was this : To strike a blow at the English in 
the East, and cut them off from communication with India. It 
was an extravagant idea altogether, this sending a French army 




CARICATURE OF GEORGE III. AND HIS COUNCIL RECEIVING THE 
NEWS OF NAPOLEON'S CAPTURE OF MADRID. 

into the Orient, to die by the sword and the plague amid the 
burning sands of the desert. 

But the Directory wanted to get rid of Napoleon — they feared 
the future Caesar, and consented to his plans. What splendid 
dreams of concjuest and glory moved the ambitious soul of Bona- 
parte at this time? Who could fathom the burning and mys- 
terious thoughts of that mighty soul? Did this lion heart aim at 
the conquering of the world? Who can tell? 

Napoleon's efforts to conciliate the natives were theatrical in the 
extreme. His knowledge of men was profound, but he utterly 



34 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

failed to comprehend the Moslem mind and character — that 
grave, drowsy. Oriental soul, so deeply indifferent to Western 
ideas and progress. When Cairo fell into the hands of the 
French, one of Napoleon's first efforts was to call an assemblage 
of Arab chieftains and form them into a Divan, or Senatorial 
body, to assist in governing Egypt, under the guiding hand of 
France. Then he issued the following remarkable proclamation, 
which was translated into Arabic : 

" We (the French army) also are true Mussulmans. Is it not 
we who have destroyed the Knights of Malta, because these mad- 
men believed that it was God's will that they should make war on 
Mussulmans? Thrice happy those who shall be with us. They 
shall prosper in their fortune and in their rank. Happy those 
who shall be neutral ; they will have time to know us, and they will . 
range themselves on our side. But woe to those who shall take 
up arms in favor of the Mameluke and fight against us. There 
shall be no hope for them; they shall all perish." (July 2. 1798.) 

The soldiers only laughed at this bulletin and the Arabs re- 
ceived it with disdain. General Menou embraced Mahometanism, 
but his example, says Lanfrey, the French historian, " only ex- 
cited ridicule, and he found very few imitators; but if the soldiers 
had no religious convictions, they had a proud feeling of their 
moral superiority. This obstacle made Bonaparte regret that he 
had not lived in ancient times when conquerors had no such scru- 
ples, and, speaking of Alexander the Great, he said he envied him 
his power of proclaiming himself the son of Jupiter Ammon, 
which had been worth more to him in his subjugation of Egypt 
than twenty battles gained. He adopted the sententious and im- 
aginative language of the East, and never spoke to the Sheiks or 
Muftis without quoting on every occasion verses of the Koran, 
and continually boasted to them of having ' destroyed the Pope 
and overthrown the Cross.' He tried hard to strike the fatalist 
imagination by asserting that human efforts could not prevail 
against him, and by attributing to himself a kind of Divine com- 
mission to complete the work of Mahomet." 

Napoleon's invasion of Syria was the sequel of one of those vast 
dreams of conquest in which he was wont to indulge. I quote 
again from Lanfrey : " At one time he studied the map of the 
deserts which separated Syria from Persia, fought over again the 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 



35 



campaigns of Alexander, and wrote to Tippoo-Saib that he was 
preparing- to ' deHver him from the iron yoke of Eilgland.' At 
another time, he pictured himself as raising an insurrection of the 
Druses and Greek Christians against the Turks, and marching- 




NAPOLEON AND HIS SON. (Painting by Steuben.) 

with this immense army upon Constantinople, and then, to use 
his own expression, ' taking Europe in the rear,' and overthrowing 
the Austrian monarchy on his way, and finally making the most 
marvelous triumphal entry into France recorded in the history of 
man." 

During Napoleon's expedition to Syria two rebellions took 



36 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

place in Egypt. One was that of an obscure fanatic, who declared 
himself to be the Angel El'mody, promised in the Koran to the 
faithful in the time of persecution. Says Lanfrey : *' His only 
food was milk, in which he merely dipped his fingers and passed 
them over his lips; and his only weapon was a handful of dust, 
which he threw in the air, assuring his followers that this alone 
would disperse our army." Several thousand natives were con- 
cerned in this insurrection. It was quelled by General Lanusse, 
who put fifteen hundred of them to the sword. The ang-el who 
expected to make his enemies '' bite the dust "' was slain. His 
weapon proved a failure. 

One of Napoleon's adventures at this period was his visit to 
the Greek monastery on Alt. Sinai, where, it is said, he inscribed 
his name under that of Mahomet in the register kept by the 
monks, but Bourrienne discredits the story. 

History tells us that the soldiers who went on the Egyptian ex- 
pedition had their hopes buoyed up with promises of wealth and 
rare treasures to be obtained in the new Golconda. In this respect 
they were like the swarthy followers of Cortez and Pizarro. 
Where were these great treasures to be found? In despoiling 
the poor fellaheen? Hardly so. For we know that it was the 
intention of Napoleon to propitiate the natives in every manner 
possible, and to win them over to French interests. Where, then, 
were to be found these fabled treasures ? Perchance deep down 
in the bowels of the pyramids — hidden there by the olden 
Pharaohs centuries ago. This belief antedated the time of Napo- 
leon. Caliph Al Mamoun, Moslem conqueror of Egypt, and son 
of that Haroun Al Raschid who figures so frequently in the 
" Arabian Nights," entertained the idea of precious treasures 
stowed away in the Great Pyramid, and ordered his army to 
quarry out an opening into the monument : but nothing rewarded 
the Arab workmen for their gigantic task save a solitary stone 
chest, hidden away in the King's Chamber — an open, lidless. 
despoiled sarcophagus. The soldiers were incensed, but Al Ma- 
moun quieted their anger by the perpetration of a pious fraud. 
He directed the malcontents to delve to a certain spot, indicated 
by him, and they soon came upon a " sum of gold, exactly equal 
to the wages claimed for their work, which gold he had himself 
secretly deposited at the place." 



THE ^lYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 



37 



Xapoleoii took with him, as is well known, a number of learned 
and brilliant savants, whose knowledge of Egyptian antiquities, 
hieroglyphics, and the like was profound. These archaeologists 
went for the ostensible purpose of studying the monuments and 
relics of the land, in order to report upon the same for the benefit 




THE KING OF ROME. (After Lawrence.) 



of science, and l)ring back with them a magnificent collection of 
curios for the museums of France. Their presence with the 
army, though a matter of ridicule among the soldiers seemed to 
give color to the firm-rooted belief that treasure-hunting was the 
aim and ambition of the Little Corporal. When a square was 
formed l)y a regiment to resist the onslaughts of a fanatical 
Mameluke cavalry, the order was usually " Savants and asses in 
the centre." The savants, as the reader will recall to mind, rode 



38 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

donkeys, like the regulation Egyptian tourists of to-day. The 
reader will find much curious and interesting data concerning the 
rumors current during the French occupation of Egypt as to 
Napoleon's acquisition of immense secret treasures discovered 
somewhere by him in the pyramids, in the gossipy memoirs of 
Madame Junot, wife of the General-in-Chief's favorite officer. 

"Bonaparte," says Bourrienne (Memoirs, Vol. I.), "on the 
14th of July, 1799. left Cairo for the pyramids. He intended 
spending three or four months in examining the ruins of the 
ancient necropolis of Memphis; but he was suddenly obliged to 
alter his plan. . . . Now the fact is. that Bonaparte never 
even entered the Great Pyramid. He never had any thought of 
entering it. I certainly should have accompanied him had he 
done so, for I never quitted his side for a single moment in the 
desert. He caused some persons to enter into the ancient tomb, 
Avhile he remained outside, and received from them, on their re- 
turn, an account of what they had seen. In other words, they 
informed him there was nothing to be seen." This event gave 
rise to a silly story that Napoleon entered the Great Pyramid and 
in the presence of the muftis and ulemas cried out. " Glory to 
Allah ! God only is God, and Mahomet is his prophet." 

History tells us that Napoleon departed hurriedly for Europe, 
after learning from some old newspapers sent him by his enemy. 
Sir Sidney Smith, that the French arms on the Continent were 
suffering reverses, and that the Directory was rotten to the core 
with its own imbecility. The time had come for the overthrow 
of this body. Junot, who loved Napoleon as his God, was heart- 
broken when his general deserted him. He applied to Kleber, 
the second in command, for leave to follow Bonaparte. It was 
granted, and the gallant soldier prepared to set out for France 
in the wake of his beloved leader. The story went like wild-fire 
through the army that Junot would carry with him an immense 
treasure — the treasure of the pyramids, which Napoleon in his 
haste was unable to take with him, and in consequence of the fact 
had left his factotum to transport, as part of his baggage. Says 
the Duchesse d'Abrantes : 

" A report was circulated in the army that Junot was carrying 
away the treasures found in the pyramids by the General-in-Chief. 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 



39 



The matter was carried so far that several subalterns and soldiers 
proceeded to the shore, and some of them went on board the mer- 




chantman which was to sail with Junot the same evening. They 
rummaged about, but found nothing; at length they came to a 



40 THE NAPOLEOxN MYTH. 

prodigious chest, which ten men could not move, between decks. 
' Here is the treasure,' cried the soldiers. 'Here is our pay that 
has been kept from us above a year ; where is the key ? ' Junot's 
valet, an honest German, shouted to them in vain, with all his 
might, that the chest did not belong to his ' Cheneral' They 
would not listen to him. Unluckily Junot, who was not to em- 
bark till evening, was not then on board. The mutineers seized a 
hatchet and began to cut away at the chest, which they would 
have soon broken up had not the ship's carpenter come running, 
quite out of breath. ' AMiat the devil are you at ? ' cried he. 
' Mad fellows that you are ; stop ! don't destroy my chest — here 
is the key.' He opened it immediately, and lo — the tools of the 
master carpenter of the ship. 

" The odious calumny, the stupid invention, relative to the 
treasures of the Pharaohs, had meanwhile found believers else- 
where, as well as in the army. The English, for example, had 
been simple enough to give credit to this story. A ship was even 
cruising off Alexandria, and the merchantman in which J'-^not 
had sailed was obliged to bring to at the first summons of the 
Theseus, man-of-war. Captain Steele, while Junot and his aid-de- 
camp. Captain Lallemand, had not the power to make the least 
resistance, how well disposed soever they might have been to do 
so. ' We were waiting for you,' said Captain Steele to Junot 
and his companion." 

IV. 

Napoleon has been apotheosised like Alexander the Great, 
whom he resembles in many points of character. A\'ith his arms 
crossed on his breast, and his little hat on his head, he seems, in all 
his pictures, to be defying the universe like a demi-god, and im- 
posing his iron will upon the races of mankind. Legend-makers 
eighteen hundred years from now will perhaps characterise him 
as a ruthless vandal from a barbarous island called Corsica, who 
swept over the civilised world carrying death and destruction in 
his train. Artists will picture him enthroned upon a huge trun- 
cated pyramid of human skulls, the spoils of his enemies. Many 
will express doubts that he ever existed. He will appear in the 
light of a mythical hero like King Arthur of Britain. This is not 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 



41 




ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
(Musee dx\ Louvre, Paris.) 



42 



THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 



altogether improbable. Archbishop Whately in his essay, 
" Doubts Concerning the Existence of Napoleon," and M. Jean- 
Baotiste Peres's " Grand Erratum, the Non-Existence of Napo- 




NAPOLEON ON THE BRIDGE OF ARCOLE. 

(After the oil-painting of Baron Gros.) 



leon Proved." have given us curious examples of how this may be 
brouglit about. Those who believe in the reincarnations of the 
soul upon the earth, like the Theosophists, will perhaps endeavor 
to show that Napoleon was identical with Rameses II. (the Se- 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 



43 



sostris of the Greeks), with Alexander the Great, and also with 
Charlemagne. Let us see where this bizarre fancy will lead us. 

In the splendid museum of Turin, Italy, among the ancient 
Egyptian relics, is a statue of Rameses, the face of which strongly 
resembles that of Napoleon, especially when seen in profile. 
Georg Ebers, the learned Egyptologist and novelist, calls atten- 
tion to this strange likeness in his novel " Uarda." 

It is an interesting fact to note that Napoleon frequently re- 




marked to his friends that he was all but certain of his identity 
with the Gothic hero Charlemagne. 

Victor Hugo says {The Rhine, a Tour from Paris to Maycncc, 
etc. ^ : 

" In 1804, when Bonaparte became known as Napoleon, he 
visited Aix-la-Chapelle, the birthplace of Charlemagne. Jose- 
phine, who accompanied him, had the caprice to seat herself upon 
the throne of Charlemagne [one of the relics to be seen in the old 
abbey] ; but Napoleon, out of respect for the great Emperor, took 
off his hat and remained for some time standing, and in silence. 
The following fact is somewhat remarkable, and struck me forci- 



44 



THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 



bly: In 814 Charlemagne died; a thousand years afterwards, 
most presumably about the same hour, Napoleon fell — 1814." 

Napoleon's similarity to Alexander the Great has always pos- 
sessed a fascination for me. Both were possessed with dreams of 
world-conquest, with the same contempt for human life, the same 
tireless capacity to labor, and both had the same military tactics 
— to perceive with an eagle's eye the vulnerable point in the foe's 
army and to hurl with lightning rapidity upon that spot an over- 
whelming phalanx of men. Napoleon, like Alexander, conquers 
Egypt, communes with the Sphinx, and dreams of becoming a 
species of demi-god, or Oriental despot. Compare the portraits 
of Alexander, such as we find them upon gems, coins, etc., with 
that of Napoleon, and the mind is at once struck with the won- 
derful resemblance. Of course it is all fanciful and bizarre, and 
one might well say that Napoleon cultivated the Greek type and 
the artists and sculptors who fixed his likeness upon canvas or in 
stone flattered him to this extent. 

The Russian campaign gave rise to legends. In the famous 
retreat Napoleon travelled usually in a luxurious coach fitted up 
as a sleeping-carriage. Says Bigelow (" History of the German 
Struggle for Liberty," Vol. II., p. 27) : " He only walked for the 
sake of stirring his blood. Of course he had a complete camp 
kitchen and an outfit of wine, and lived as well as it was possible 
to do. That he shared the struggles and sufferings of his men, 
even to the extent of riding his horse in their midst, is the inven- 
tion of patriotic painters and novelists. Napoleon respected the 
doctrine I'etat c'est moi, and felt that he was serving the state 
badly if he neglected his own health." The soldiers during the 
retreat were burdened down with all sorts of articles taken from 
the sacred city of Moscow, money, jewelry, furs, costly laces and 
silks, icons, clocks, etc. Napoleon carried off with him as the 
piece de resistance of the plundering expedition, the cross from 
the top of the Kremlin — " as though to prove that he had con- 
quered the country by desecrating its capital. But it proved to 
be nothing but base metal, gaudily gilded for the purpose of de- 
ceiving those far away." Notwithstanding this, it was carried 
along in the strange procession to play its part in the anticipated 
triumphal entry of the modern Caesar into Paris. It is related 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 



45 




46 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

that on the entry of the French forces into Moscow that an 
eagle was seen entangled amid the chains of this cross, high up 
on the bulbous-shaped tower of the Kremlin. By some this was 
declared to portend disaster to the French army. It proved 
true; the Imperial Eagle of France, Napoleon, was certainly 
caught in the trap set for him by his enemy, Holy Russia, 
represented by the gilded cross. Moscow proved Napoleon's 
Golgotha. His downfall and exile to Elba began there. 

Victor Hugo, poet, novelist, and symbolist, has given us the 
epic of Waterloo, in his powerful story, '' Les Miserables," the 
foremost work of fiction of the 19th century. He has done for 
literature what Raffet and Steuben have done for art. Waterloo 
in Hugo's hands becomes the Supreme Enigma, the Twilight of 
the Gods. His conception of the subject is worthy of a Michael 
Angelo. The figures become gigantic. It is a species of Apoc- 
alypse. He says : '' Was it possible for Napoleon to win the 
battle? We answer in the negative. Why? On account of 
Wellington; on account of Blucher? No; on account of God. 
. . . When the earth is suffering from an excessive burden, 
there are mysterious groans from the shadow, which the abyss 
hears. Napoleon had been denounced in infinitude, and his fall 
was decided. He had angered God. Waterloo is not a battle, 
but a transformation of the Universe." " Did this vertigo, this 
terror, this overthrow of the greatest bravery that ever astonished 
history, take place without a cause? No. The shadow of a 
mighty right hand is cast over Waterloo; it is the day of destiny, 
and the force which is above man produced that day. Hence 
the terror, hence all those great souls laying down their swords. 
Those who had conquered Europe, fell, crushed, having nothing 
more to say or do, and feeling a terrible presence in the shadow. 
Hoc erat in fatis. On that day the perspective of the human 
race was changed, and Waterloo is the hinge of the 19th cen- 
tury." 

When Francis I. of iVustria heard of the defeat of his son-in- 
law at Waterloo, he exclaimed : " I always thought that man 
would end badly; he wrote such a villainous hand." But to re- 
turn to Hugo, 

What word-painting could be grander than this bit from 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 



47 



Hugo's description of the Cuirassier charge : " At a distance it 
appeared as if two immense steel snakes were crawling toward 
the crest of the plateau ; they traversed the battlefield like a flash. 




. . . It seemed as if this mass had become a monster, 
and had but one soul ; each squadron undulated, and swelled like 
the rings of a polype. This could be seen through a vast smoke 
which was rent asunder at intervals ; it was a pell-mell of helmets, 



48 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

shouts and sabres, a stormy bounding' of horses among cannon, 
and a discipHned and terrible array ; while above it all flashed the 
cuirasses like the scales of the hydra. Such narratives seemed to 
belong to another age; something like this vision was doubtless 
traceable in the old Orphean epics describing the men-horses, the 
ancient hippanthropists, those Titans with human faces and eques- 
trian chests whose gallop escaladed Olympus, — horrible, invul- 
nerable, sublime ; gods and brutes. It was a curious numerical 
coincidence that twenty-six battalions were preparing to receive 
the charge of these twenty-six squadrons." 

The last stand of the Old Guard is described with equal mag- 
nificence. " They are no longer men, but demi-gods hurling 
thunderbolts." In the disastrous retreat he speaks of Napoleon 
as follows : " At nightfall, Bernard and Bertrand seized by the 
skirt of his coat, in a field near Genappe, a haggard, thoughtful, 
gloomy man, who, carried so far by the current of the rout, had 
just dismounted, passed the bridle over his arm, and was now, 
with wandering eye, returning alone to Waterloo. It was Napo- 
leon, the immense somnambulist of the shattered dream, still 
striving to advance. . . . Such is Waterloo ; but what 
does the Infinite care? All this tempest, all this cloud, this war, 
and then this peace. All this shadow did not for a moment dis- 
turb the flash of the mighty eye before which a grub, leaping 
from one blade of grass to another, equals the eagle flying from 
tower to tower at Notre Dame." 

" ' Napoleon is dead,' said a passer-by to an invalid of Ma- 
rengo and Waterloo. ' He dead ! ' the soldier exclaimed ; ' much 
you know about him ! ' Imaginations deified this thrown man. 
Europe after Waterloo was dark, for some enormous gap was 
long left unfilled after the disappearance of Napoleon. 

" With the fall of the Dictatorship an entire European system 
crumbled away, and the Empire vanished in a shadow which 
resembled that of the expiring Roman world. Nations escaped 
from the abyss as in the time of the Barbarians. . . . The 
Empire, we confess, was lamented, and by heroic eyes, and its 
glory consists in the sword-made sceptre ; the Empire was glory 
itself. It had spread over the whole earth all the light that 
tyranny can give, — a dim light, we will say, an obscure light ; 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 



49 




50 



THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 



for when compared with real day, it is night. This disappear- 
ance of the night produced the effect of an eclipse." 

. . . " Those who triumphed were alarmed. England had 
him guarded by Hudson Lowe, and France had him watched 
by Montcheme. His folded arms became the anxiety of thrones, 
and Alexander called him his insomnia. This terror resulted 
from the immense amount of revolution he had in him, and it is 
this which explains and excuses Bonapartistic liberalism. This 
phantom caused the old world to tremble, and kings sat uneasily 
on their thrones, with the rock of St. Helena on the horizon." 

After the fiasco of Waterloo, when the allies were in posses- 
sion of France, Paris was filled with old soldiers of the Empire. 
They gnawed their bristling moustaches with chagrin at the sight 
of the beloved tricolor made over into the white flag of St. Louis. 
They frequented the cafes and picked quarrels with the English 
and Germans. Many a blonde Anglo-Saxon and Teuton fell on 
the duelling field by the swords and pistols of the partisans of the 
great Emperor, who was their idol. When Napoleonic relics 
were forbidden to be sold by the government many of the soldiers 
of the shattered grand army carried walking sticks with carved 
heads that would cast a curious silhouette of the exiled Emperor. 
a contrivance of an inventive carver-in-wood. To all outward 
appearance the canes were innocent looking enough, but bring 
them near a lighted wall and lo ! — a shadowy likeness of Bona- 
parte, cocked hat and all! Marion, in his work on optics, gives 
some interesting specimens of these canes. This is fetish wor- 
ship carried to an extreme. 

No grander body of Pretorians ever existed than the Imperial 
Guard of Napoleon. At Waterloo they seemed to disdain death, 
and willingly bared their breasts to the cannon balls. They were 
not routed, but retired slowly and sullenly before the English. 
Legend has been busy with these heroes. " The Old Guard dies ; 
it never surrenders ! " is the reputed reply of Cambronne to the 
English. What he really did say; — but that is best told by Vic- 
tor Hugo, in his chapter on Cambronne. in " Les Miserables." 
But, dear reader, you must get an unexpurgated edition of this 
famous book. But what became of the Imperial Guard ? It was 
disbanded by Louis XVIII. The officers, who served in the cam- 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 



51 



paign of the Hundred Days, were " declared to be incapacitated 
to receive any title or form any part of the new army about to be 
organised. The superior officers were dragged before military 
commissioners." Ney, who led the last charge of the Guard, was 
shot. Many of the officers fled to foreign lands. Some of them 
came to Texas, and endeavored to form a settlement there, but 




JAMESTOWN, ST. HELENA 



without success. They drifted back to New Orleans and were 
lost sight of in the whirlpool of events. 



V. 

Napoleon was superstitious. He believed in the " evil eye." 
At St. Helena, referring to his first interview with his jailer. Sir 
Hudson Lowe, he said to Dr. O'Meara. " I never saw such a 
horrid countenance. He sat on a chair opposite to my sofa, and 
on a little table between us there was a cup of coffee. His phys- 
iognomy made such an unfavorable impression upon me that I 
thought his evil eye had poisoned the coffee, and I ordered Mar- 



53 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

chand to throw it out of the window. I would not have swal- 
lowed it for the world." 

Napoleon constantly referred to his " Star of Destiny." 
In instituting his famous Legion of Honor, he substituted a 
star for the cross of St. Louis. The celebrated French mystic 
and cabalist, Eliphas Levi, has this to say on the subject :* 

* De la Haute Magie, vol. H., pp. 55-62. "The pentagram," says Levi, "is 
called in the Gnostic schools the Blazing Star, and is the sign of Intellectual 
Omnipotence and Autocracy. It is the Star of the Magi ; it is the sign of the 
Word made Flesh, and, according to the direction of its rays, this absolute 
symbol represents Good or Evil, Order or Disorder, the blessed Lamb of 
Ormuzd (Ahuro-Mazdao), and St. John, or the accursed Goat of Men- 
des." . . . 




FIGURE OF THE PENTAGRAM 
(From Levi's work Dogme ct ritiicl de la haute magie.) 



"The pentagram expresses the mind's domination over the elements and it 
is by this sign that w^e bind the demons of the air, the spirits of fire, the 
spectres of water, and the ghosts of earth. If it be asked how a sign can 
exercise that immense power over spirits which is claimed for the pentagram, 
we inquire in turn why the Christian world bows before the sign of the cross. 
The sign by itself is nothing, it derives its strength from the doctrine it sym- 
bolises, and of which it is the Logos. Now a sign which epitomises by signifi- 
cation all the occult forces of nature, and which has always manifested to 
elementary and other spirits a power superior to their own, naturally strikes 
them with fear and respect, and enforces their obedience by the empire of 
knowledge and will over ignorance and weakness. . . . The pentagram 
was traced by the old magicians on the threshold of the door, to prevent evil 
spirits from entering, and good ones from going out." 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 53 

" The whole revolutionary work of modern times was symbol- 
ically summed up by the Napoleonic substitution of the Star of 
Honor for the Cross of St. Louis. It was the Pentagram substi- 
tuted for the Labarum, the reinstatement of the symbol of light, 
the Masonic resurrection of Adon-hiram. It is said that Napo- 
leon believed in his star; and that if he could have been persuaded 
to say what he understood by this star it would have been found 
that it was his own genius ; and therefore he was in the right to 




VIEW OF LONGWOOD, ST. HELENA. 



adopt for his sign the Pentagram, that symbol of human sov- 
ereignty by the intelligent initiative." 



VI. 

Do what we may, the Napoleonic legend will die hard. The 
masses of the people, who are anything but critical, will still invest 
the great Emperor with the halo of mystery, superstition, and ro- 
mance. Painters, poets, and novelists will contribute in the fu- 
ture, as they have done in the past, to this building up of the 
mythos about him. 

The famous lithographic draughtsman, Raffet, years ago, be- 



54 



THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 



gan the symbolical and mystical treatment of the Napoleonic 
cycle. Take, for example, his " Retreat of the Sacred Battalion 
at Waterloo," "Waterloo, June i8, 1815," La Revue Nocturne, 
etc. 

Could there be finer examples of idealisation in art than the 
Nocturne? It is the bizarre apotheosis of the imperial drama; a 
weird and fantastic bit of impressionism. It is midnight in the 
Champs Elysees. A cold wind blows ; the moon is partly hidden 




LONGWOOD FROM A DISTANCE. 



by clouds. Suddenly appears a phantom army. The dead Napo- 
leon holds a review of spectres — " aroused for one night from 
eternal slumber by the sound of the trumpet. An army of horse- 
men pass by like a whirlwind, and salute with their swords the 
modern Caesar on his white charger." 

The German poet, Zedlitz, celebrates the scene in some splendid 
verse ; Raffet, in black and white, makes it real for us, conjuring 
up, like a modern Ezekiel, a second vision of the Valley of Dry 
Bones. They come, they come, from all parts of the world, sol- 
diers from the burning sands of Egypt, the snowy steppes of 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 



55 



Russia, the vineyard dotted fields of Italy, to participate in the 
review, only to melt away into the land of shadows at the first 
blush of the dawn in the eastern sky. 

Everything connected with Napoleon is theatrical, his corona- 
tion, his death, his second funeral. While he was dying, a ter- 
rific thunderstorm was raging at St. Helena. It seems as if na- 
ture had conspired to make the death of the Csesar heroic. Amid 




REVEILLE OF THE DEAD. (After Raffet,) 

the crash of thunder, like the sound of artillery. Napoleon cried 
out, " Tete d'arinee!" (Head of the army.) He doubtless 
imagined himself again at Austerlitz, or Waterloo. During the 
Emperor's sojourn at St. Helena, the English newspapers often 
hinted at French plots to rescue him. It is actually said that mem- 
bers of the Old Guard contemplated an attempt to take Napoleon 
from his rocky prison, but that it proved abortive, owing to the 
extreme vigilance of the English authorities. The lynx-eyed Sir 



LofG. 



56 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

Hudson Lowe watched his wretched captive too well. Some day 
in the dim future, legend-makers will declare that Napoleon was 
delivered from his enemies. He will be made to sail away in a 
ship like the mythical Arthur, surrounded not by weeping women, 
but by the remnant of his Old Guard, those bronzed and battle- 
scarred heroes, and disappear forever from the knowledge of 
mankind. The great sarcophagus of black marble, beneath the 
dome of the Invalides will then have crumbled into dust, and be 
no longer a mute witness to the truth. 

Napoleon's second funeral created a tremendous furore in 
France, and did much to perpetuate the legends. It was a great 
spectacle. On the Esplanade des Invalides, the giant funeral car 
passed between an avenue of thirty-two statues of famous kings 
and heroes, among whom were Charles Martel, Charlemagne, 
Clovis, and the Chevalier Bayard. Says Tarbell : " Oddly 
enough, this hedge of statues ended in one of Napoleon himself: 
the incongruity of the arrangement struck even the gamins. 
' Tiens; cried one urchin, 'voila coinine I' einpcreur fait la queue 
a lui menie.' (Hello, see there how the Emperor brings up his 
own procession.)" 

The funeral ceremonies at the Invalides was a great dramatic 
spectacle. Amid the glare of countless wax lights, the coffin was 
carried up the aisle, on the shoulders of soldiers and sailors. 
Louis Philippe stood at the catafalque to receive the remains. 
The Prince de Joinville, who headed the procession, said to him : 
" Sire, I bring you the body of the Emperor Napoleon." The 
king replied: "I receive it in the name of France." Then (to 
use the language of Thackeray, who was present, an interested 
spectator from la periidc Albion) " Bertrand put on the body the 
most glorious victorious sword that ever has been forged since 
the apt descendants of the first murderer learned how ^o hammer 
steel." 

All this honor, all this sham magnificence, the colossal statues 
of papier mache, the gilded eagles, the tall braziers burning alco- 
hol flames, the chanting of priests, the clouds of incense, the 
music, rolling drums, and thundering cannon — all this, thrown 
awa)' upon the mute figure ensconced in its narrow house of lead. 
Pitv that Dante had not lived in the Nineteenth Century to de- 



THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON. 



57 



scribe for us, in his lava-like verse, the punishment of the modern 
Caesar in the Infernal Regions. Would it have been very differ- 
ent from a certain scene shown by Virgil to the poet ? Imagine 
Napoleon, torn with remorse and horror, surrounded by the dis- 
membered bodies of those slain during his wars of aggrandize- 
ment. The bloody arms with clenched hands rise up to menace 
him ; the ghastly heads vomit curses upon him ; the bodies exhibit 
their gaping wounds to him. Can we not hear these gory heads 




FUNERAL CORTEGE IN THE CHAMPS-ELYSEES. 
December 15, 1840. After the design of Ferogio and Giraid. 



crying out to the Emperor : " Why didst thou desert us after 
Moscow, after Leipzig ! Traitor, False Friend, Coward ! " And 
one still more horrible-looking: "Ah, why didst thou not die 
with us at Waterloo, amid the wreck of the Old Guard ! " Ah, 
why not? Because the great Gambler was irresistibly drawn 
like a needle to the lodestone rock — to the rock of St. Helena, 
the shadow of which doubtless darkened the cradle of his baby 
days. St. Helena was necessary for him. He who had insulted 
kings had to chafe and fume under the petty insults of a Hudson 
Lowe, and eat his heart out with chagrin, deserted bv his Aus- 



58 



THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 



trian wife, who took comfort in the arms of a Von Neipperg. 
The bones of the wretched Josephine, rotting away at Malmai- 
son, were indeed avenged. 

The body of Napoleon was finally laid away in a massive 
sarcophagus of the black marble of Egypt. It lies beneath the 
great gilded dome of the Invalides, which has been compared by 
Hugo to a giant helmet, fit covering for the First Captain of the 
Age. 




TOMB AT ST. HELENA. SILHOUETTE OF NAPOLEON 
AMONG THE TREES. 
(Historical snuffbox in collection of M. Maze.) 



NAPOLEON'S COCKED HAT. 







APPENDIX. 

NAPOLEON'S COCKED HAT. 

HISTORY OF THE FAMOUS BLACK FELT WORN AT WATERLOO. 

(From N. Y. Tribune, Oct. 30, 1904.) 

Paris, October 11. 
The famous cocked hat worn by Napoleon at Waterloo was 
the subject of sharp discussion last Thursday at the Institute of 
France. The late painter, J. L. Gerome, had bequeathed the 
historic relic to the Institute to be preserved in the Conde Mu- 
seum at Chantilly. This legacy excited the indignation of sev- 
eral members of the Institute, including Messrs. Mezieres, Gruyer 
and Leopold de Lisle, who petitioned that august body to refuse 
the bequest, alleging that, as the Chantilly Museum was a monu- 
ment commemorating the glory of the great Conde, it would be 
highly unbecoming to place in it the head-dress of the man who 
in 1804 had ordered the Due d'Enghien, great-grandson of the 
Prince of Conde, victor of Rocroy, to be shot. The question of 
the cocked hat became a burning issue, and, in accordance with 
the petition, an extraordinary plenary session was held, and after 

61 



62 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

a vigorous debate among the members of the five academies it 
was decided by a vote of forty-two to twenty-eight to accept the 
legacy. Consequently, the black felt Napoleonic hat will shortly 
be placed at Chantilly in a glass case beside the flag of Rocroy. 
This exciting historical discussion has elicited interesting reve- 
lations concerning Napoleon's hats and uniforms. It appears 
that of the one hundred and fifty hats belonging to the great 
Emperor there are only seven now known to be in existence. 
By his will, dated April 15, 1821, Napoleon left to his son, the 
Due de Reichstadt, all his wearing apparel and equipments, in- 
cluding jewels, hats, swords, saddles, uniforms, boots, spurs, 
camp bedsteads, etc. In the lot marked by the Emperor " C '" — 
" inventory of my personal effects that Marchand will keep and 
deliver to my son " — were two cocked hats. After Napoleon's 
death the faithful Marchand sought in vain to be allowed to see 
the sequestered Due de Reichstadt — " I'Aiglon " — and to hand 
over to him the objects that had belonged to his father. The 
Due de Reichstadt died without ever seeing the relics bequeathed 
to him. The objects were then divided among the Emperor's 
surviving brothers and sisters. The hat w^orn by the Emperor 
at Waterloo was among the lot assigned to the ex-Queen Caro- 
line, wife of Murat, who subsequently gave it to her secretary, 
F. B. de Mercey, " a reward for long and faithful services." 
De Mercey left the hat in his will to his eldest son, who some 
thirty years ago sold it for the sum of 17,000 francs to the 
painter, J. L. Gerome. The historic hat was placed by Gerome 
in a glass case in his dining room, adjoining his studio, at Mont- 
martre, which was situated nearly opposite to the Moulin Rouge 
Music Hall. Shortly before the Due d'y\umale's death Gerome 
was lunching at the Chateau de Chantilly. While sipping coffee 
the painter remarked : " Do you know, monseigneur, that a para- 
graph in my will concerns you? " " Indeed," exclaimed the Due 
d'Aumale. " Yes," replied Gerome, " I have left to the Conde 
Museum the hat worn by Napoleon at Waterloo." The Due 
d'Aumale manifested some astonishment, and asked Gerome 
to tell him how the " interesting relic " came into his possession. 
No further mention was made of the hat until Gerome's will was 
probated, when the matter was eagerly discussed, and it has 



NAPOLEON'S COCKED HAT. 



63 



at last been decided to place the famous black felt head-dress in 
the central room of the museum beside the flag of Rocroy. 




OLD SOLDIER'S PRAYER ON THE .sTH OF MAY. (After a Litho. by de Charlet.) 

The seven authentic Napoleonic hats now in existence are all 
of different dimensions. Prince Victor Napoleon, Prince Louis 
Napoleon and the Empress Eugenie each have one. A fourth is 



64 THE NAPOLEON MYTH. 

owned by Armand Dumarescq, a Parisian painter. Another 
figures in Mme. Tussaud's museum in London beside the guillo- 
tine which served to decapitate Louis XVL and Marie Antoinette. 
The sixth hat of Napoleon was once the property of Meissonier, 
the military painter, and, after having served as the model in 
all of that artist's pictures of the Emperor, was given by Charles 
Meissonier, the painter's son, to the Museum of the Army at 
the Invalides, where Napoleon was buried. The seventh hat of 
Napoleon is that which he wore at Waterloo, and which is now 
going to the Conde Museum at Chantilly, the magnificent castle 
and domain left by the late Due d'Aumale, lineal descendant of 
Conde, to the Institute of France as a national monument to com- 
memorate his illustrious ancestor. 

It is interesting to note that the legend of the " petit chapeau " 
still exists. Frenchmen always refer to the headgear of the First 
Napoleon as " the little hat." This is because the hats worn 
by Bonaparte at Toulon, at Lodi, in Egypt, during the famous 
eighteenth Brumaire, and at Marengo were all quite small. When 
the Emperor became stouter he ordered his hatter to widen the 
brims of his head-dress so as to be more becoming. As he grew 
stout and as his face became bigger and bigger, his hats became 
broader and broader. The hat of Waterloo is considerably 
larger than the hat of Austerlitz. These facts are recorded in 
the inventories of the Emperor's hatters, Poupard et Cie., who 
had their shop near the Law Courts, and which were recently 
discovered by M. Germain Bapst, the Parisian antiquarian. Na- 
poleon, although careful of his personal appearance, had a terrible 
habit of soiling his waistcoat with snuff, which he carried loose 
in the left-hand pocket, thereby doing away with the inconven- 
ience of carrying a snuffbox. It appears that the Emperor had 
also a slovenly trick of wiping the ink from his fingers on his 
breeches. The hats, however, were free from such accidents, 
and he prided himself on the graceful way in which he wore 
them. A writer in the " Gaulois " suggests that it would be 
interesting to discover some of the hats which Napoleon in- 
variably refused to remove from his head when he received 
kings and sovereign princes under the rank of Emperor. He 
uncovered his head only in the presence of the Emperors of 



NAPOLEON'S COCKED HAT. 



65 



Russia and of Austria. One day Napoleon received the Kings 
of Bavaria and of Saxony at Saint-Cloud. As the two kings 
removed their hats the Emperor acknowledged their salutations 
by merely touching the brim of his cocked hat with his fore- 
finger. — C. Inman Barnard, Paris Correspondent. 



4/-I ^ jM"i Ji^. i; 




uto ki^ ]go4 



